Gadgetory

hi this is DITA Bella the verge and I'm in Sunnyvale California at the offices for project ara it's the moonshot project out of the advanced technologies and products group inside Google and they're trying to build modular smartphones that will let consumers swap out components on the fly it sounds like a nerds dream but the real dream is to up and how we make and buy phones in the future project ara isn't the phone it's actually well a project a chap a group that in some part came out of DARPA is essentially just making the instructions for how a modular phone will work they're developing the technology of the different pieces to talk to each other and working with partners to build prototypes at the center of it all is an endoskeleton an unassuming slab with different slots where you can put in modules there's some wild technology inside this metal frame ara is using next-gen super fast networking technology to get all the parts to talk to each other it manages power and lets you hot-swap modules it uses wireless capacitive pads so what the modules communicate with the mainboard and each other even the way the modules lock into the frame is futuristic in this lateral direction they are held using electro permanent magnets which is a pretty neat technology it's a it's a it's kind of a cross between a permanent magnet and an electromagnet in that it has an on state and an off state it uses a a pulse to switch between those two states but it's a passive component meaning it consumes no power and both the off state in the on state but all that technology doesn't add up to a phone it's essentially just networking it doesn't have your main processor your cellular radio or even a screen adding all those things on piecemeal can make for pretty bulky phone but a chap has managed to build something that doesn't look completely ridiculous trying to keep the form factor of a device to something that is that we think is is is elegant and beautiful where each individual module has this pebble like a sleek watertight aesthetic associated with it and so as a consequence that leaves because because the form factor is is is defined by this that leaves a little bit less area for for functional components traditional phones put as many parts as possible on a single circuit board or even a single chip pulling all those things apart into separate modules has costs the phone gets fatter battery life drops and overall the thing gets heavier Eremenko thinks that he can convince people that the trade-offs are worth it and so we want to make sure that that that overhead that inefficiency is minimized and we think the crossover point is somewhere somewhere the one-third overhead point we think will come in at about one quarter for about 25% overhead and the the by crossover I mean that's where consumers are willing to trade some penalty in exchange for the flexibility and for the richness of the ecosystem and the ability to customize functional and aesthetically the aesthetics matter a lot even if Eremenko Zam Bish's plans work out people still have to want to use the thing to get their a tap is working with a partner to create a first-of-its-kind 3d printer which will be able to rapidly build customized plastic shells for each module what that means is that we'll be able to create module enclosures which on any given module are user replaceable we call them shells and so a consumer in the RO marketplace will be able to to utilize shell maker apps to create beautiful designs that are not just unique not just custom but can also be expressive to to the consumer this week Eremenko Anna's team is finally getting into the nitty-gritty of how ro will work by hosting a conference for hardware developers the group has an aggressive goal of launching a real product for consumers about a year from now so getting there won't be easy and they'll need the support both big and small manufacturers to do it more you think about project ara the crazier and more ambitious it seems Eremenko is a tap group itself consists of just a handful of people they're working with partners develop prototypes and create the spec they're also on an insanely tight schedule and strangely enough it's a schedule they've imposed of themselves so the internal team and in this case the team internal to Google is very very small very very lean and and we're here for a very short period of time so I have I had a two-year tenure and one year into my two year tenure the project is scoped to the team's tenure and as a consequence the the philosophies of time is not your friend and and innovation under time pressure is higher quality innovation it tends to get rid of red tape it tends to get rid of dithering and inability to make decisions it tends to take away risk aversion so so it's innovation under time pressure a tap came from a team of people who originally worked at DARPA pursuing futuristic projects Eremenko himself had plans for next generation war vehicles and even something called fractionated spacecraft a taps philosophy is to aim high and demand that you make something real something more than just a prototype in only two years so the ability to take sort of fundamental scientific and technical understanding groundbreaking physics and technology and intersect that with a driving very compelling moonshot practical application as a consequence they culminate they have to culminate in demonstration they can't just culminate in theory or PowerPoint or a lab demo so so the the DARPA mantra is is that we do demonstrations at a convincing scale and what that means is that the demonstration has to retire all the key technical business and market risks demonstrations at convincing scale is a weird phrase but it's an important one it means that project ara has higher stakes than Google's other moonshot projects like self-driving cars or Internet blasting balloons by this time next year the eight F group has to actually prove that AR can work it has to have a critical mass of module developers and potential consumers in fact they're targeting the five billion people who don't yet have a smartphone if they can pull it off it could be a huge deal hardware manufacturers won't have to try to convince giant phone makers to include their parts on big-name phones they can just sell them directly to consumers consumers won't have to throw away their old phones when they want to upgrade and the H app team well they're going to have to find another crazy problem to tackle project RL will be handed off to Google and Eremenko we're moving on to the next moonshot